West with the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

heard your plane I almost prayed that you’d had a flat tire or whatever you have in planes — anything to see a new face and hear a new voice. It isn’t considerate, but you get that way living in a hole like this — or dying in it.’
    ‘You don’t have to die in it. You’ll get well and then I’ll come back and fly you to Nairobi.’
    ‘Or even to London.’ Bergner smiled. ‘After that we might try Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York. My future looks brighter and brighter.’
    ‘You forgot Hollywood.’
    ‘No. I just thought it was too much to hope for all in one breath.’
    I noticed that, in spite of his spirit and his courage, his voice had grown thin and less certain of its strength. He was holding himself together by sheer power of will and the effort made the atmosphere of the hut strained and tense.
    ‘You are staying over, then?’ He put the question with sudden urgency.
    I didn’t know how to explain that I had to leave. I had a feeling that he wouldn’t have believed my reason; that with the quick suspicion of the insane and the very sick, he would have thought I was only trying to escape.
    I mumbled something about how nice it would be to stay, and that I would, for a while, but that there were other things — a pilot down, the Avian to be refuelled …
    I don’t suppose he heard any of it. He started to sweat again and his legs jerked under the blanket. A fleck of spittle formed on his lips and he began to talk in meaningless garbled words.
    I couldn’t understand all of what he said, but even in delirium he was neither sobbing nor complaining very much. He mumbled only about small things, people he had known, places in Africa, and once he mentioned Carl Hastings and Nairobi together in an almost intelligible sentence. I had come closer to the bed and leaned down over it, feeling a wave of sickness in my own body. Trying to quiet him, I talked, but it was a wasted effort. He caught his hands in the loose folds of my flying clothes, tearing at the fabric pulling himself upward from the bed.
    I wanted to call out for Ebert, for anyone. But I couldn’t say anything and no one would have heard, so I stood there with my hands on Bergner’s shoulders feeling the tremor of his muscles pass through my fingertips and hearing the rest of his life run out in a stream of little words carrying no meaning, bearing no secrets — or perhaps he had none.
    I left him at last and tiptoed through the door of the hut, closing it quickly behind me.
    Bergner may have lived for a while after that, and it may be that the other man for whom the little doctor ordered the oxygen is still mining gold at Nungwe. But I never went back there again and so I never knew.
    Years later, I did meet a man named Carl Hastings at one of those cocktail parties where both the people and the conversation pass out of your life and memory by dinner-time.
    ‘There was a man named Bergner,’ I began, ‘a friend of yours …’
    Mr. Hastings, who was tall and swart and tailored smoothly, raised his glass and frowned over the edge of it.
    ‘You mean Barnard,’ he said, ‘Ralph Barnard.’
    ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s Bergner all right. You must remember — Christmas at Mombasa, some kind of bet about getting married? I saw him down at Nungwe and he told me about it.’
    ‘Hmmm.’ Mr. Hastings pursed his lips and thought hard. ‘It’s a funny thing about people,’ he said, ‘a very funny thing. You meet so many and remember so few. Now take this chap you’re talking about … Barker did you say his name was …?’
    There was a tray of cocktails near my elbow, so I reached over and took one.
    ‘Cheers,’ said Mr. Hastings.
    I took a sip of the drink, remembering my take-off from Nungwe, seeing it once more, clearly, in all its detail.
    There were Kavirondo helping with the fuel tins, there was Ebert still apologetic, and still a bit disappointed — and there was the bedraggled windsock, with its toe still